WFMU's Beware of the Blog

How Many Gods Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb? Just One.

When I first heard about Christian-based, politically conservative, "clean" comedians, I became fascinated. It all seemed so fantastic. I imagined that they were perhaps the bravest stand-ups in the world. Save for a handful of examples, today's comedy mediums have been starved into a thin, garish, sexual-and-irony over-loaded raketentestgelände. Over-reliance on shock tactics and repetitious sexual innuendo have diluted and transformed a one-rich genre into a rigid, rule-based rocket-testing field, with performers firing off one shock blast after another to trigger gasps from audiences, who's reactions become more and more robotic and disposable. How could a pro-Christian values, "clean comedy" type of performer even dare to compete in today's meta-jaded media arena? What a dare!

A certain brand of comedy had always existed in church settings; from clown and puppet ministry troupes which flourished in the 1950's and 60's, to motivational youth speakers who used humor to communicate hard-learned life lessons to young minds in the 70's, to bumper stickers that read "How many Gods does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one..." of the 80's. But...

Live at WFMU - Death Sentence: PANDA!

We had some special visitors to the Magic Factory yesterday - San Francisco free-jazz-noise trio Death Sentence:  PANDA! came in to record a session for an upcoming edition of Bill Zurat's show.  Twisting together saxophone, clarinet, flute, drums, vocals, and effects in a stacatto cacophony, DSP! shook WFMU's Love Room with a mighty swell noise.

The entire recording will be aired on Bill's web-only show on October 13th, 2006, and will be available in the archives thereafter.  In the meantime, whet your appetite with these video clips of their excellent session, recorded on 9/28/2006 (special thanks to Volunteer Bil Bowen for engineering).

Death Sentence:  PANDA! on WFMU, clip 1. (3.7 MB mpeg video)
Death Sentence:  PANDA! on WFMU, clip 2. (6.3 MB mpeg video)
Death Sentence:  PANDA! on WFMU, clip 3. (10 MB mpeg video)

Martin Scorcese's Sesame Streets Trailer

This is too good to keep it buried in The Blather Box (in the side column at left): a video mashup of Sesame Street with dialogue from various films by Martin Scorcese: Sesame Streets (nsfw: download mpeg video, 5 megs or youtube it). Thanks to Joe Nathan, and to everyone else who's been posting great links in the Blather Box.

Las Comadrejas MP3s

Who?

(jump the flip for a full album's worth of mp3s)

Did you know there was a musical freak scene in Mexico City?  Apparently Ira Kaplan, Jonathan Poneman and Alan McGhee knew this, but I did not know this.  On our Irwin's last visit, a freak named Carlos handed him his band's CD.  The band was Las Comadrejas, and they're at the center of a thriving psychedelic scene currently shaking that fair megalopolis, just 556 miles south of that very secure fence currently in the works.

"We Are Ugly, but... We Have The Music", no delicate object of whimsey, is actually named after a lyric from Leonard Cohen ("Chelsea Hotel No 2", to be exact - the one about Janis Joplin and, well... you know).  This is their second album, and track 9, "da Kinx" (Realaudio archive), is the thing that first blew most of our minds here.  It was lunchtime on a Wednesday, and a relentless blast of Tiger Mountain-era Eno up against some Amon Düül II-isch aggression came through WFMU's inhouse speakers, allowing us to experience the aural equivalent of getting beat up by the lunch-money bully.  I mean this in a good way.  The rest of the album takes in doses of surf twang, looping drunkard's guitars, hillbilly goofiness, and a bit of flamenco and blurts it all out with a minimalist pounding heaviness that's more invigorating and smelly than much dressed-up Rock Music you hear now'days.

Jump the flip for a bit of bio straight from founding member Carlos Icaza, links to others on the scene, some context, and 10 fat pumping mp3s.

WFMU Featured in Daniel Johnston Doc DVD's Special Features

Jeff Feuerzeig's much lauded (as in darling of Sundance) documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston has hit DVD this past week and we're excited to announce that one of the disk's bonus features is audio (accompanied by WFMU's logo) culled from the legendary Music Faucet broadcast. This program, which was hosted by Nicholas Hill in February of 1990, was an amazing hour of Daniel performing via telephone at home (at times with Yo La Tengo playing along in the FMU East Orange studios), conjuring up a dizzying, primitive rock opera with Johnston performing all the characters' parts in glorious lo-fidelity while playing tapes, cueing records and playing assorted instruments right into his phone. It's such an action-packed sugar buzz of a show that Johnston barely allows Nick to introduce Yo La Tengo ("hi band!" he blurts before moving on quickly), and is an overall stunning snapshot of Daniel in high gear directly transmitting his personal universe right on the spot in a way rarely heard in his other recorded output. As for the film itself, it's rare that a documentary about a musical cult icon traverses interest boundaries to likely appeal to non-fans or those unaware of the hipness quotient that has inevitably attached itself to his entire career. Johnston's psychological troubles (which were riding at high tide during the time of this WFMU show, he had just returned to West Virginia after a harrowing NYC visit which is detailed in the film) are portrayed with sensitivity, and his talent spotlighted very well through the eccentricity. From handing out tapes at an Austin McDonalds to ascent to major-labeldom (mainly spurred on by the Cobain seal of approval) and descent, to the modern day rollercoaster ride of living low key with his parents in Texas while playing to thousands of fanatical fans in Europe, the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of Daniel Johnston and the people around him are extremely well-documented herein. Feuerzeig has claimed that the FMU broadcast was his catalyst to make this film all these years, and recently was interviewed on Tom Scharpling's show (Real Audio).You can check out the 1990 broadcast as well here (Real Audio), when it was run on our Aircheck program. You can also view a trailer for the film here, and finally, you can actually see a screening of the film at WFMU's upcoming Record Fair on Saturday, November 4th at 4:00 PM. Feuerzeig will be present for Q&A afterwards (125 West 18th Street in Manhattan).

I WANT MY DDT

Q: When does the bedbug truly cease to be one of New York City's dirty
little secrets?
A: When you find one of the little fuckers crawling across your own
sheets at three am!

I don't want to bore you with the statistics - but I do happen to
like this one from a recent Times article:  "Cindy Mannes, of the
National Pest Management Association, said in a telephone interview
that it recorded a 71 percent increase from 2000 to 2005 in the
number of exterminators who had received calls about bedbugs." (link)

Now, I have no idea where the little bastard came from - all I know
is that I wish I had it drawn and quartered and set on fire before I
smashed it - that perhaps MIGHT have made up for the pain from the three bites I got - but right now I am trying to be positive - and
hope that well.. it was the only one..  sigh... (delusions, I know, I
know)

Anyway, I spent the week surfing the web to find out what I
could do - The masked hunter (link) seemed like the best option but I couldn't find one for sale. But I did learn that it is only a matter of time before one can purchase some DDT!

Serious! Allow me to lay it out for you - On the one hand we have the anti-science lobby, not only do they dis the idea of global warming - they also take the banishment of DDT as a serious human rights violation - as one of their luminaries Michael Crichton says in his book State Of Fear:

Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.

These nut-jobs, who have been trying for years now to overturn Silent Spring, are fast becoming hip to the idea that the winning strategy is not dead African children but rather America's bugbitten! (link)  The Exterminator lobby is ready to seize the moment as well (link). Scroll through the comments from this recent Gothomist post on bedbug rage - this DDT thing definitely has legs! (link).   

As for me, I'm thinking of picking some up when I go to China next month. Why wait?

Tokyo Rose (aka Orphan Ann) Dies at 90

Iva Ikuko Toguri was probably the most infamous female disc jockey in American history. Born in Los Angeles in 1916, Toguri was forced to broadcast propaganda for Japan during World War II after the U.S. abandoned her there just days before the Pearl Harbor attack.

In 1941, Toguri made an untimely trip to Japan to visit an ill relative, leaving the U.S. without a passport. Her attempt to return home without documentation was stymied: she applied for a passport from the U.S. Vice Consul in Japan, but the paperwork was still being processed when war was declared. Physically and culturally stuck, Toguri learned Japanese and held typist positions with various news agencies during the war.

Chosen out of the NHK/Radio Tokyo typing pool to be a disc jockey on The Zero Hour program by the very Allied POWs being beaten and starved into writing her shows, Toguri became adept at sabotaging her own broadcasts. Though employed to broadcast pro-Japanese propaganda, Toguri's outspoken support of the Allies off-mic (while cleverly concealing it within her message and delivery on-air) resulted in numerous arguments, fisticuffs, and sometimes daily 3 am harassments thanks to the Kempeitai Thought Police. She helped keep American soldiers alive (at mortal personal risk) with food, medicine, clothing, and hope during her almost daily visits to their cells.

As an American unwilling to denounce her citizenship, Toguri was not to be trusted by the Japanese, and as an American woman of Japanese extraction broadcasting for the Japanese, she was considered a traitor in her own country.

Oprah Turns Us Down, We Make New Fall Schedule Anyway

Apparently she was indignant about her being the first one do come up with the idea of singing Tapestry a capella or something, and has been publicly annoyed at Kenny G for stealing her fire repeatedly in the past. Well, no matter, we couldn't arrange that promo deal to give away cars to the first 100 Record Fair customers who had tattoos anyway, so best of luck to Ms. W. in her radio aspirations. She's got style (Real Audio). But WFMU continues to move onward into the future, and the new Fall Schedule kicks off Monday, October 9th, running through June 11th. Welcome to some newbies and welcome back to some staffers who took a break; the new schedule can be viewed in table form, or as a long list with show descriptions, RSS feeds for each show, artist listings per show, etc.

David Bowie's Latest

David Bowie uses his song-writing magic to improvise a little ditty on last week's episode of "Extras", Ricky Gervais' latest sitcom post-"The Office". 

Atari Music

Video game inspired mp3s after the jump.

A few years ago I picked up an Atari 2600 and a bunch of games at a thrift store. I never had an Atari as a kid. I always had to go to the neighbor's house to play his Atari, which was frustrating because he could give me a sound thrashing on pretty much every game. Finally, after much begging, I did get my own videogame system, but it was, dammit, Intellivision ("intelligent television"). 16 bits be dammed, it just didn't have the cool games, and instead of having the cool kids over to my house, I ended up stuck playing Poker and Golf with the adults in my family. Boring! That's my step-brother and I looking not-so-psyched about our new gift in the photo.

Finally getting my own 2600 proved to be cathartic, even if I did lose interest in most of the games rather quickly. Still, there's nothing like a lazy Sunday afternoon with the old-school Atari, and just the right music playing in the background. Music like this and this and this.

I enjoy the background music/video game combination so much that I decided to rename all of my cheesy Euro-disco and New Wave and Glam and Classic Rock. It is now, according to my iTunes, "Atari Music". Of course, I wasn't the first to think of this. Why, during the early 80s there was already such a genre...and it all revolved around quickie albums released to cash in on the booming video game craze. 

Japanese Queen Medley (MP3)

Here's an unknown Japanese combo doing a medley of Queen's greatest hits. I did my best to edit this together from the video snippets that appeared on this page, but there are inexplicable gaps and abrupt transitions. No matter: there are far too many syllables in the Japanese translations of Bohemian Rhapsody and Bicycle Race, and that's what really counts: download MP3

Snoop-Reiff Sociology Mashup

The  translation site called Gizoogle allows you to translate any selection of text or website into Snoop-Dogg talk. I decided to run some quotes from Fellow Teachers, a ponderous jeremiad about the death of Western culture by the late American Sociologist (and former husband of Susan Sontag) Philip Rieff. Here's what I got:

Fellow Playas--- Barbarians is thugz witout historizzles memory. Barbarism is tha real mean'n of radical contemporaneity . Boo-Yaa!. Releazed fizzy all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarism, not away, fizzy. So show some love, niggaz! . . . Beyond some kind of faith, therapy describes tha social procedure of releaze fizzle tha authority of tha past ta help you tap dat ass. It takes at least two ta commit a therapy . Keep the party crackin while I'm steady rappin'. . . . Our pedagizzle tizzle remains ta repair tha old n forge new links, not ta continue ho-slappin' old ones already so broken that our students have scarcely done mizzy tizzy heard rumors of they existence.. . . Love comes afta law in tha mutha fuckin club. Positive acts is prepared by negative commandments. Boom bam as I step in the jam, God damn. The modern notion that a victim has no rights represents tha return of tha mizzy primative iniquity, a worship of he who does n a contempt fo` he who is done to.. . . . Every politizzle world exists in its own right only whizzen it can justify itself.  But real niggaz don't give a fuck. Pimp justificizzles authority in tha right, can be so only coz there is thizzat which is wrong, n those who is wrong is doa from tha streets of tha L-B-C. If ta be 'justified' once meant, as it dizzy ta be freed from tha penalty of sin, through grace n not through merit, by tha highest authority, T-H-to-tha-izzen our human justice must involve tha tragic relation of riznight authority as tha penalty of wrong-do'n.  Authority is a rizzight action, reserved fo` acts of wrong with my hoes on my side, and my strap on my back. Only thus is tha exercise of powa ever remotely near tha condition of being just. Therefore no justice can be said ta exist witout reverence. This is tha principle of pimpin' witout which there can be no law, as Protagizzles rightly teaches . Throw yo guns in the motherfuckin air.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 27

Here’s the second installment of an AM band dial scan I began a couple weeks back at BOTB. This little radio safari was recorded while I camped out on the deck of a beach house on the Connecticut coast near Bridgeport in late August.

Serious DXers favor the eastern coast of North America for picking up AM stations broadcasting from Europe and Africa (although a location right on the Atlantic Ocean rather than Long Island Sound would be preferable). However, the best time for that would be early evening and the best results would include employing an external antenna. I’d love to try this sometime, but was hardly equipped to do so on this excursion. One day...

This upcoming weekend I’m headed out of the RF noise of the city for the Catskills Mountains where I plan on scanning the international shortwave bands in search of interesting and exotic programming to feature in this series. With these two posts I’ve made a point of getting back to exploring the AM band again, because it remains the heartland of amplitude modulated broadcasting and sometimes it’s just fun to hear traffic reports from other regions of North America.

I gotta say that I think we may be coming into a prime season for some compelling and strange content on both U.S. AM radio and international shortwave. In a few days we’ll enter October, a month preceding a national election in this increasingly bizarre country of ours, and the polls still hint that the Republicans are at risk of losing the house and possibly the senate. It might just be prime time for a big political firestorm... I mean, a BIG surprise. And it’s not just the constructively paranoid types predicting it. Word is King Pig Karl Rove himself is promising something special for the faithful. So do stay tuned.

William S Burroughs Witchcraft Newsreel (video)

This is actually a remix of a remix, but the first half of it comes off as a 1930's newsreel on witchdraft, with croaking narration by William S Burroughs: download mpeg video (19 megs), or youtube it. The original satanic footage here is from a 1922 silent film which was re-released in 1968 with a soundtrack by Jean-Luc Ponty and narration by Burroughs. Either the 1922 original or the 1968 re-release was titled Superstition: Middle Ages and Now. For the brand new second half, your guess is as good as mine. via youtuber johnplex.

And while we're on the subject of Burroughs, here is an MP3 of him and the Eudoras, covering the Mortal Micronotz track Old Lady Sloan: download MP3 thanks Charlie!
 

More eBay Fun

Check out the goods this week, click here to see what WFMU is peddling on eBay. Descriptions of said goods provided below by Volunteer Wendy:

Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief - by Donna Kossy
It's a book. It's a big, coffee-table book. This is the 1st edition, published in 1994. The subject: see the title. For instance, learn about the belief that while, yes, the earth is round, it's not convex but concave - yes, the earth is really the INSIDE of a big sphere. Or how about: The "Third Eye" is a hole in your head. Yes, trepannation - it makes you wise, like a baby.  Kossy's sociological studies into the lives and beliefs of her subjects is without condescension, no matter how strange they may seem to those in the mainstream. Quite a read, it is. Maybe your belief is in there.

SCRAM 'Zine  Issue #5 Summer 1996
If you're up on your Factsheet Five Zine Reading Guide, you no doubt are familiar with SCRAM. Yes, it's a guide to unpopular culture. Don't we all need a little bit of that? This back-issue takes you from
Celebration (Disney's planned community) to HATE (Peter Bagge), with various stops along the way, including one with singing rodents. And the centerfold pinup is a must-see.

"The Sensuous Woman" by "J" LP
No, it's not the book. It looks like the book, if the book were flat and 12" x 12". This adaptation of the book, read by Connie Z, is set to music. The entire thing was produced by Marty Thau and recorded at NYC's famed Electric Lady Studios over there on 8th Street. It was released in 1971, so you know it's porn-o-riffic. Once you hear the section on the etiquette guide to orgies, you will ask yourself what you ever did without this LP. Ditch your worn-out disco 12" records and sample THIS, dollface. 

**Because eBay wants to protect you from yourself, you need to provide a blood sample to view it, as it is in the "Mature Audiences" section.

Train Your Bird in Stereo (mp3s)

(Two MP3 files for the enjoyment of birds and humans alike in this post.)

I hate nothing more than to publicly disagree with the excellent Online Guide to Whistling Records. Yet we cannot sacrifice truth for decency, lest the terrorists win. So I have no choice but to set the record straight on Train Your Bird in Stereo by Henry J. Bates and Robert L. Busenbark, released in 1968 on Americana Records. Here is the whistling experts' review of this LP: "The album cover is striking, but the record, narrated by this pair that authored a training book, is a real snoozer."

Bates and Busenbark will undoubtedly be familiar to most readers of this blog as the authors of such landmark reference books as Parrots and Related Birds, Finches and Soft-Billed Birds, and  Guide to Mynahs. Given this background, it is no surprise that their training record is a favorite with parrots all over the English-speaking world. However, what makes this record special is something nobody would have expected from those two bird lovers. It is their uncanny mastery of Stereophonic Zen and the expert use of Soothing Background Music.

The first side (MP3) of this record already starts off promisingly with guitar music straight out of an Italian tourist restaurant, over which Henry and Bob tell you how to tame your new bird. Even though this side of the record seems to be intended for humans, they use strict channel separation for their voices. The interesting content, riveting delivery, and the constant drive of the background music will keep you glued to the speakers, both of them.

While the first side is great already, only on the second side (MP3) the full genius of modern Zen masters Bates and Busenbark shows. The soothing guitar in the background is replaced by an ethereal celesta or something, and the lyrics have been pared down to a few essential phrases. The whole piece is structured like a minimalist poetic cantata with parts Hello There, How Are You Today, Combination of Above, I'm Fine Thank You, Who Are You, Combination of Above, and the magnificent coda Combination of All Phrases. Not only is this a striking piece of avant-garde art, it also helps to test your stereo system and teach your bird to speak. The modern world needs more artists of Bates' and Busenbark's caliber.

Where O Where Art Thou, Kid 'N Play?

While the RIAA is busy suing music fans, poor sister agency SoundExchange (responsible for distributing webcasting royalty payments) can't seem to locate some of the artists it owes money to. Check out this amazing list of musicians and bands that SoundExchange just can't seem to track down. Oh well, guess they'll have to keep the money themselves.

Highlights? Oh, yes:

Ice Cube   |   Joao Gilberto   |   The Animals   |   Dimebag Darrell   |   Husker Du
Mahalia Jackson   |   Dinosaur Jr   |   Grand Funk Railroad   |   Public Enemy
Screeching Weasel   |   Redd Kross   |   Lauryn Hill   |   Kelis
Gladys Knight   |   USA For Africa   |   Will Rogers   |   Yo La Tengo

Equally disturbing: Scott Joplin is on the list, even though most of his catalogue has been in the public domain since 1991 (well before the days of internet streaming)! Has SoundExchange been charging webcasters for playing public domain material all this time?

via Boing Boing

The Department of Beer, Photo ID and Sheetrock (video)

It's a good thing that the police take really drunk people off the streets, cause, you know, they might actually hurt themselves: download wmv video, 3 megs. Thanks to John from Oslo, one of our newest bloggers here.

Admiral Yi Soon-Shin in My Living Room!

Hello, Everybody--nice seeing you again.

About a year ago (July 18, 2005) I wrote in Beware of the Blog about the great hero of my life, the Immortal Admiral Yi Soon-Shin, and the 100-episode Korean television series about him. Now a version of that TV show is available from DVD From Korea. I say a "version" because it's been edited down to 33 episodes in two boxed sets. I don't care—it's worth it, worth it, WORTH IT. It's worth the $90 for each box, and it's worth the $34 just to ship 'em over from Korea. I know, I don't have that kind of money either, but put 'em on your credit card-—it is WORTH IT. Supposedly the DVDs are all-region, and they are definitely English subtitled. If I could afford it, I would give these box sets to everyone I know for Christmas this year. But since I can't get them for you, I hope you will get them for yourself.

Lately I've been reading about another big hero of mine, Adriaen Van der Donck, the man who invented American democracy. I've been thinking about heroism, and how it's defined as much by circumstances as by character. If Japan hadn't attacked Korea in the 16th Century, Yi Soon-Shin would still have been born and lived and died, but he would not have been the immortal hero who was created by that war. Van der Donck, too, was shaped by the forces of history, and could just as well have been a  fat and happy Calvinist preacher in Breda in the Netherlands. Any random person you see on the street today may have the heart of a hero, but just not the circumstances ever to demonstrate it.

One of the original members of ESG drives a New York City bus for a living: When you get on the bus, do you see a middle-aged Latina driver, or do you see the quintessential 20th-Century beat machine?

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

 

The Secret Spice is....

Since I'm on vacation in the UK this week, I thought I might like to share some local gossip which might be of interest to fans of albums which were never meant to be released and/or cheesy 90's pop:  prick up your ears and harken this news via demonoid.com:

"Victoria ['Posh Spice'] Beckham is furious because a secret album she scrapped has been leaked onto the internet. The former Spice Girl recorded the eleven track "pop style" album, entitled 'Open Your Eyes', between 2002 and 2003 but hated it so much she declared it "useless" and ordered it be destroyed as she never wanted anyone to hear it.

A music industry insider told Britain's Daily Star newspaper: "Victoria didn't know what she wanted while manager Simon Fuller and Telstar were clear they wanted dance-influenced pop. "She recorded the tracks that have now been leaked, but then met Damon Dash and went off in a hip-hop direction, demanding the pop album be binned. She hated these songs and couldn't wait to scrap them."

Record label Telstar released one single, 'Let Your Head Go/This Groove', from the album in December 2003. It got to Number 3 in the UK charts after a huge media campaign. Shortly after, Telstar went bust and it was thought the album would never be heard. But loyal fans of Victoria are delighted that the mother-of-three's lost LP has finally surfaced. One fan said: "It's amazing. If only she'd have released these, she'd be as big as J.Lo now." Victoria, the wife of footballer David Beckham, has now given up her music career to concentrate on fashion design and recently launched her own fragrance.""